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Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#341

Post by jopsen »

rsj_hn wrote: post #309
m12k wrote: post #15

I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…

This is called the "infant industry" argument, and it has been made since at least the 16th Century, most famously by Antonio Serra, a proto-mercantilist. This idea of raising tarrifs on imports and then using the money to protect domestic industries has been tried in Latin America in the 60s and 70s, in Africa, and in many places. The results are mixed. The problem with infant industry is that you get a group of loc…

> Another way of saying this is that the infant industries often fail to grow up, they remain protected infants forever.

This is a good point!

> Each nation's assets should be owned by their own citizens only.

Curious, why? Countries vary in size, so this seems like an arbitrary restriction.

Also: how is it undesirable to have a foreign company build a factory that hires workers?

Won't growth be slower without foreign investments?

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#343

Post by rsj_hn »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #339
rsj_hn wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called the "infant industry" argument, and it has been made since at least the 16th Century, most famously by Antonio Serra, a proto-mercantilist. This idea of raising tarrifs on imports and then using the money to protect domestic industries has been tried in Latin America in the 60s and 70s, in Africa, and in many places. The results are mixed. The problem with infant industry is that you get a group of loc…

I tend to agree. The issue with capital or land is that you are taking another country's tender that may be debased in exchange for capital/land that your own citizens are priced out of (due to other countries running the printing press). This is why it is prudent to lock up certain assets (land / long lived assets) to citizens of the country. This is where china succeeded. You go in, you give up IP and share %, and…

Yup. 40% of US corporate equity is owned by the foreign sector. We have sold off almost half our capital stock to foreigners in exchange for short run corporate profits and cheap foreign goods.

And any attempts to adopt a more nationalistic trade policy that promotes sovereignty are met with pretty brutal suppression from our internationalized corporate sector and their various handmaidens in the press and progressive politics -- which now has no loyalty to America at all.

And this is happening all over the world, but most prominently in the US as well as Southern Europe. Domestic political forces that hate the native population are collaborating with the domestic corporate sector to sell every piece of capital that isn't bolted down to overseas investors with cheap printing presses and a longer time horizon.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#344

Post by WalterBright »

oblio wrote: post #311
WalterBright wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterexample, the US has 50 states, and no internal protectionism. Yet there are no "colony" states.

The starting point for the US states is/was much closer than that of random countries around the world, to each other. US states, despite what Americans tell themselves, are culturally/socially/economically a lot more homogeneous than random countries around the world are to each other. And US states are all protected by the same federal government. None of them can really be abused by outside forces with little/no r…

The original 13 colonies were pretty diverse. For example, some of them had slave economies and some didn't. That's a huge difference. Even today, some states are much larger than others, some are very populous compared to others, some are resource intensive others are manufacturing intensive, different ethnicity populations, etc. Their economies are diverse.

> They really can't be compared

Sure they can. They show that a diverse set of "countries" with no trade barriers results in mutual prosperity. It's one of the great ideas of the United States.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#346

Post by jopsen »

true_religion wrote: post #122
TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other points are already addressed in different comments, but to address this one: > Ghana doesn't have all of the layers of industry necessary to support development and export of products i.e. there are no market buyers at any reasonable price. Per the article, they literally control half of the world's cocoa. This means they get to define what "a reasonable price" is, as long as the rest of the world wants to keep…

The last time Ghana blocked cocoa sales, the European powers responded by creating plantations in other countries to break Ghanas monopoly of the supply. Then they went a step further in researching and marketing low cocoa chocolate so their domestic population would be less reliant on cocoa. Agricultural luxury goods are one area where it’s hard to continually push a monopoly advantage. That said, I think that if Gh…

> European powers responded by creating plantations

So European companies setup plantations?

But yes, Swiss chocolate manufacturers have some options: a) setup a processing plant in Ghana, b) increase production somewhere else, c) reduce usage..

Maybe more.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#347

Post by dikaio »

haspok wrote: post #153
killtimeatwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital…

How can you compare China (population ~1.4bn) to any EU country (population average ~10mn - several orders of magnitude less, even in the case of the largest country)? Size is an advantage, not a disadvantage! Pretty much none of the tactics would have worked for a small country that China played successfully. If you are small you can choose to be independent and protectionist - and remain very poor, or join the part…

Unfortunately for us the US will first need to learn that it’s better to keep US citizens out of prison, being productive in the workforce than locked up.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#348

Post by I-M-S »

arethuza wrote: post #195
nasmorn wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where else to go to a good oldfashioned lashing?

Saudi Arabia apparently has stopped using flogging: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/25/saudi-arabia-t... However, plenty places still use corporal punishment, including Singapore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_corporal_punishment

Public beheading then (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deera_Square)

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#349

Post by Robotbeat »

babesh wrote: post #245
throwbacktictac wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's healthy to have a diverse set of mid and upper market companies. Chinese companies will ultimately buy their way into up market businesses. One antidote that I can readily think of is the acquisition of the street wear company Bape buy a the Chinese/Hong Kong manufacturer I.T Group. Forbes magazine is another company that was acquired by a Chinese company. Furthermore, Hong Kong has some international ap…

Hong Kong companies have better brand reputations than Chinese companies but gradually there are more Chinese brands gaining better reputations. I would expect this to continue. In fact, there are probably a few brands that are Chinese that you don’t realize are Chinese.

I’m not sure the whole swallowing of Hong Kong (and ignoring the two systems one country thing decades before it was set to lapse) is helping with brand reputation.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#350

Post by Robotbeat »

thereddaikon wrote: post #233
killtimeatwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital…

Funny you say that because exactly the opposite thing happened to China. They were completely taken advantage of in the 19th century and didn't fully recover from that until a 100 years later when Nixon and Kissinger in one of their "4D chess" moves restarted diplomatic relations as a way to limit the Soviets. From that point on they had a pretty clever long view policy but it would have been surprising if they hadn'…

A popular revolution in 1989 China would have restored Chinese culture. It was the CCP that squashed it.
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